What in the world?

I wonder what in the world is wrong with our young people. It's 27 degrees outside, snow is all over the ground, and now I see not just the young men, but the young girls sagging -- their pants are down below their butts. It looks bad, I personally think it's unsanitary, I'm not concerned with their underwear or the stains that creep out of their backsides, but here's my primary question: Don't they get cold?!?! And how could they think that's attractive? Who in the world would go out with someone who's too stupid to pull up their pants when it's 27 degrees outside?

Maybe I'm old and bitter or jaded or evil or something. I just don't get it.

I am very happy to report that the City of New York was on top of the snow cleanup today. I don't know if it was 6 or 10 or 12 inches that fell. What I do know is that by 1 am the roads were white. By 6 am, I don't think they'd been plowed, but by the time I left the house around 11, the sidewalks and streets were cleared. There's been enough fallout from the last snowfall and the City's ineptitude (while Mike Bloomberg vacationed in Bermuda) that I guess they did a little overkill this time.

So I'm a little sad today. I'm sad because my fellow travelers from my first Israel pilgrimage are returning today. Yeah, I'll go back in November, and I'm planning return to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and of course I'll meet new pilgrims, but it would be nice to travel again with my friends. I wish them well. Perhaps we'll be able to all go together in 2012. Problem is, I usually go at the end of the year and they go near the beginning. So maybe I'll just have to go at the end of 2011 and again at the beginning of 2012. Maybe there'll be an independent Palestinian State by then!!! (a woman's gotta dream, right?)

The other thing that's on my mind is the lunacy represented by Sarah Palin. I won't regurgitate the horrible tragedy that happened recently in Tucson. OK, I will: this nutjob decided he wanted to kill people. AZ is a carry state (one of the reasons I left, incidentally: I still partied when I lived in AZ. And I remember seeing this guy who was drunk but pissed off. But he was strapped, cuz in AZ it's legal to carry as long as you don't conceal. There weren't a lot of black people in AZ at that time (I compared living there to living in MA -- Black populations of about 3%, and used to say they didn't hate black people in AZ because they were too busy hating Mexicans.) He didn't look like he had any love for black folk, and it occurred to me then that a drunk guy having a bad day could just pull out his gun and shoot people. Especially black people. I love AZ, but that and the fact that you don't have to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle, are two things about it that give me pause to wonder if maybe this "personal freedom" stuff hasn't gone too far.) But anyway. AZ is a carry state, and the nutjob carried an automatic weapon to a shopping center. While he did want to kill Congresswoman Giffords, he just took out his gun and sprayed everyone in his path. He shot Congresswoman Giffords through and through in her brain, and yet she lived. He killed several people, among them a lay preacher who threw himself on top of his wife, thereby saving her life, and a nine year old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001. The others who died are worthy of mention by name. They were: Dorothy Morris, Judge John Roll, Gabe Zimmerman, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwin Stoddard, the guy who gave his life for his wife. May God rest their souls.

So the shooting prompted conversations from several people in the media to tone down the rhetoric we use. We should stop the hate language, they said. Keith Olberman actually apologized for anything he may have said that was inciteful. Then you had the idiots get on and start talking about how there was no connection between language and people's actions, and how you couldn't blame politicians for one crazy guy. In the midst of all this, it was noted (and actually Congresswoman Giffords had spoken on this before) that Sarah Palin's website actually had gun target sights over several districts, among them Congresswoman Giffords' district. That was seen as an example of why divisive rhetoric should be toned down -- even if only crazy people react to it, putting a gun sight over someone's district can potentially jeopardize a life.

Sarah Palin gets on TV last night. Or this morning, I forget because I was half asleep. But I remember her saying some nonsense about the media being guilty of blood libel (blood libel, incidentally, is a term used to describe the assertion that Jewish people murder children and use their blood in religious rituals.)-- she goes on TV and says that "journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

OK, so let me get this straight, Ms. Palin: it's ok for you to put gun sights over a Congresswoman's district. And when that Congresswoman (who, by the way, has a Jewish father and though technically is not Jewish has said she embraces her Jewish identity) -- when an attempt is made on the life that Congresswoman of Jewish descent, your response is to attack journalists and pundits for inciting hatred and violence, while remaining completely oblivious to pictures that may have appeared on your website and that do, in fact, appear to have precipitated not only violence, but a violent and fatal attack on several people? Am I understanding you correctly?

And this is a woman who was considered a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the Western World?

May God have mercy on the United States of America. And may there be a very special place in ignoramus hell for all the TeaPartiers. We've always known the Tea Party was just a front for organized racism -- so I guess now they're just proving they're stupid. Which is sorta superfluous since we know they're racists...

I wish I could say I feel better now that I've written this, but I don't. I'm feeling like the thought of a retirement home in Costa Rica might have to become not just a dream, but something I act on. At this rate, it may not be safe for me to think about living in North Carolina, which is a Red State. It's not a stupid state, but it is still a Red State. For now. Historically, I guess it's purple, sorta like Florida.